True Love (and Other Lies)

by Whitney Gaskell

  “How did you know where to find us just now?” I asked quietly, wondering if this private investigator had been trailing us the entire time I’d been in England. What a creepy thought.

  “I waited outside of Jack’s house, and followed you to the park. And when I saw it was you there, with him—I couldn’t believe my fucking eyes,” she said, spitting the words out.

  “I want to explain, I just don’t know how to start,” I said feebly.

  “Start at the beginning, then. And, please, don’t leave anything out. I think I’m entitled to know everything,” she said.

  I took in a deep breath, trying to suck all of the nicotine out of the cigarette. I considered asking her for a glass of wine, but then decided against it—I’d be lucky if she didn’t hit me over the head with the bottle.

  “I met Jack on my flight to London back in November. We just happened to sit next to each other. And we hit it off. Then when we got here, he called me, and we arranged to see each other. At that time, I had no idea that he was the same person that you were seeing, I swear to God. Anyway, we spent time together while I was here, and it was . . .” I paused for a minute, not sure if I should finish the sentence with the word “amazing,” as I meant to. I also didn’t know how to tell her that Jack and I had become intimate so quickly, and that maybe if we hadn’t, and maybe if there hadn’t been such an incredible physical attraction between us, that it would have been easier to walk away once I did know. I was pretty sure that any way I put it, it was going to make her feel that much worse.

  “It was . . . what? Go on, get to the part where you decided to lie to me,” she said. “I can’t wait to hear your justification for that.”

  “Maddy, at that point, I still didn’t know. Don’t you remember, I was here for several days before you and I talked? I didn’t know who he was until that afternoon when I came over here,” I said, sweeping my hand in front of me, “and Jack showed up to pick up his things. He didn’t know who I was either. It was just the most horrible coincidence, I swear.”

  At this, Maddy snorted. “Yeah, I just bet it was.”

  “How could I have known who he was? I’d never met him before, or seen his picture. Hell, I didn’t even know his last name, and I’d never heard you refer to him as anything but Harrison. And for some reason, I could have sworn you said that your boyfriend was British,” I protested.

  “No, I never said that. Come on, I want to hear the rest, especially about how it is that you’re here now,” she said. I wasn’t surprised at the level of animosity in Maddy’s voice, but it was disconcerting how composed she was. No tears, no histrionics, and this from a woman who cried hysterically at the end of Pretty Woman.

  “When I left here that day, left you and Jack here, I went back to my hotel, and I thought that was it. I didn’t expect that I’d ever see him again. I figured he wouldn’t call me after that, and if he did, I planned to tell him that there was no way we could see each other again. But then . . .” I trailed off again.

  “But then . . . Christ, Claire, just tell me. I’ve pretty much figured out that he did call you, and that you did see him again. I’m not an idiot,” she snapped.

  “Yes. I saw him again. That last night before I left to go back to New York. And then once I got home he called me, and came to visit me once—I didn’t know he was coming, he just showed up unannounced. And then he asked me to spend Christmas with him here in London,” I said, and stubbed out the smoldering end of my cigarette.

  “And you lied to me about it,” Maddy prompted me.

  “Yes. I certainly withheld the information from you that he and I were in contact,” I said carefully.

  “In contact? Is that what you call having his dick inside you?” she asked, and I winced at the vulgarity, not out of my own modesty, but because it was so unlike Maddy.

  “It was more than that. I know you couldn’t possibly understand, because I know I did a shitty thing, both in continuing to see him and in not telling you about it, but I had . . . I have feelings for Jack. Strong feelings. So strong, they made me lose my head. Not that it’s an excuse for what I did, but I haven’t exactly been thinking clearly lately,” I finished lamely.

  Maddy had also finished her cigarette, and she promptly lit another one. “And you expect me to believe your little story? That you just happened to sit next to my boyfriend on a plane, and that the two of you fell in love, and it was all out of your control?” she asked.

  “No, I’m not saying that. It was within our control, within my control, and I was so wrong to have let it happen without talking to you about it. Please believe me, I mean it when I say that, and I’m so, so sorry that I’ve hurt you,” I said.

  “That’s not what I meant. God, you are such an idiot,” Maddy said, and amazingly, she began to laugh. It wasn’t her normal laugh, an effervescent and frothy sound that always reminds me of summer. This was a harsh bark, and the smile didn’t reach her eyes, which were now narrowed into vengeful slits. “You may not have known who he was, but Harrison certainly knew who you were.”

  “What?” I asked, and then began shaking my head. “No, Maddy, he didn’t. I know it sounds like really long odds—astronomical odds—that we’d end up sitting next to each other on a plane, but I swear, that’s what happened.”

  “Claire. Don’t be so stupid. He knew you were going to be on that flight. He called me that afternoon before he left New York, and I even made a joke that you two might end up on the same flight. He said he’d look out for you,” she said.

  “But . . . how? How would he know who I was, what I looked like?” I asked.

  In response, Maddy leapt to her feet and stalked into the kitchen, returning a moment later with the photograph I’d seen posted on her refrigerator. It was the one of us in Cancún, tanned and drunk, our arms wrapped around each other’s shoulders, margaritas held forward in a toast . . . the same picture Jack had sworn to me that he’d never seen. I’d thought Maddy had put it up on her fridge just before my first visit to her flat, the same way newlyweds try to pull wedding gifts out of drawers and put them on display when they know the gift-giver is coming over.

  “Because he saw this picture every single time he was at my apartment. He commented on it all the time, said he wanted to know the face behind the e-mails,” she said, holding the photo up for me to see. “Did he tell you that? That I used to let him read the e-mails you sent me? He was always saying how funny you were.”

  She looked down at the picture, studying it. I wondered if she, like me, was remembering that vacation. We’d gone only a few months after Maddy had lost her father, and it was on that trip that the heavy burden of grief had begun to lift, that I’d started to see glimpses of the old Maddy. But then Maddy dramatically tore the picture in two, cutting us apart, and letting our images fall to the ground.

  “I guess I don’t need that anymore,” she said icily.

  I didn’t know what to think. Was she telling the truth about Jack knowing what I looked like? Had he purposely set about meeting me on the plane? And if so, why didn’t he tell me who he was? What was the point of hiding it from me? Or was Maddy just angry, and now inventing this story to make me doubt Jack? Would she do that? Although she hadn’t offered a second one to me, I reached for her pack of cigarettes, extracted another, and lit it.

  “I can certainly understand your anger,” I said slowly, puffing on the cigarette—my new best friend—while I tried to think of a way to make sense of everything. “But we honestly didn’t set out to hurt you. And I’m sure that even if Jack did see my picture, he didn’t know it was me. My hair’s different now, it’s long and straight, and in that picture it was shorter and wavy.”

  “You don’t get it, do you? Oh, wait,” she said, and then laughed again. “You think he’s in love with you, don’t you? You think that he’s Prince Charming, here to sweep you off your feet. You probably felt sorry for me and my poor broken heart, while the two of you danced off into the sunset. You smug little bitch
!”

  I winced again. Whoever this woman was, it was not the Maddy I’d always known. She was like a brittle, hostile shell of her former self. I’d expected her to be hurt and angry, but never imagined she’d react with this vitriolic hatred.

  “I didn’t feel sorry for you,” I lied. “I just felt . . . so horrible for how upset you were. And I wanted to tell you, but I didn’t want to cause you any more pain. I know that was wrong of me, that it was the coward’s way out, but . . .”

  “I wish you had told me. Because then I could have set you straight and saved you all that worry,” Maddy said, clearly mocking me. “Look, sweetheart. Harrison hasn’t been pursuing you because he’s fallen for you. I don’t mean to be cruel, but you’re not really his type. He goes for models, and women that are a little more . . . well, let’s just say that he’s a little out of your league,” she said.

  This swipe, her claws fully extended, hurt. It was meant to. I knew that Maddy was angry, enraged even, but I’d never known her to be purposefully cruel. And yet, although I could rationalize that she was probably just trying to wound me by aiming a well-placed kick at my self-esteem, her words were starting to have an unpleasant note of truth to them. I knew that it was true that Jack had dated models in the past. I was a size fourteen with childbearing hips and average looks . . . why would someone who could date a Maddy, or a Katrinka, go out with me?

  “Harrison found out about my relationship with Alex, my boss, right before that trip to New York. I told him the night before he left London, and he was devastated. I knew that he was thinking about breaking things off with me, but I didn’t know that he was going to seek out his revenge. Think about it, Claire. I broke his heart. And then he just happens to meet my best friend on a plane and falls in love with her? Can’t you hear how ridiculous that sounds?” Maddy asked, and she shook her head and stubbed out her cigarette.

  My mind was reeling. I couldn’t take in everything that she was saying. Was it really possible that Jack had known who I was, and pretended not to? I remembered the conversation where he’d told me he had no idea that I knew Maddy, had no idea that I was the Claire she was friends with, remembered clearly how firm he’d been, how his explanation had seemed to make so much sense. But why? Why lie to me? And why continue to pursue me after I returned to New York?

  “I know you’re upset, but what you’re saying isn’t making any sense. I know it must have been so hard for you to see us together like that—God, I can’t even imagine how painful that must have been for you—but I swear, neither one of us set out to hurt you,” I said.

  “Oh, really? Harrison lied to you about not knowing who you were when you met. Why are you so sure that you know what his real motives were?” she asked.

  “Because if he really wanted to hurt you, he could have just told you that afternoon that we’d already slept together,” I said, more bluntly than I meant to.

  Maddy looked a little shaken at that, but she covered it with another one of her cold barking laughs, and said, “Really, Claire, fucking on the first date. That’s a little desperate, even for you.”

  I shook my head, refusing to rise to the bait. “I’m sorry about everything. I truly am. And I want to do whatever it takes to put things right between us. I know you’re angry now, and that you probably don’t think that you can forgive me, but—”

  “What did Harrison say about hiding your relationship from me?” Maddy interrupted me.

  The question seemed to come from nowhere, and for a moment, I was taken aback. “He . . . he said not to. He wanted me to tell you everything, so that we weren’t sneaking around behind your back,” I said, stupidly thinking that this would convince her that his motives weren’t as malicious as she seemed to think.

  “He just said that once, casually, in passing?” she asked.

  “No . . . no. He brought it up several times. In fact, he was pretty adamant that I not hide it from you,” I said. I had a terrible feeling that she was getting at something, but what that was I couldn’t tell. It made me feel a bit like Little Red Riding Hood skipping right into the lair of the Big Bad Wolf.

  “And that didn’t strike you as strange? It didn’t occur to you that if he really was falling in love with you, and that if he really was over me, that he’d leave it up to you how to handle our friendship?” she asked.

  “I don’t know what you’re getting at,” I said.

  “God, Claire, stop being so thick—Harrison wanted you to tell me about your relationship because he knew that was the way he could hurt me the most. He knew how close we were, knew how much our friendship meant to me. That’s how he was going to get his revenge, by using you to hurt me,” she snapped.

  A sickening feeling spread through my stomach. I simply couldn’t reconcile the person she was describing with the man I was falling in love with.

  “If he’d told me that he’d fucked you that one time, before you knew who he was, then it wouldn’t have been a betrayal. I’d have just thought he was a weasel for using you like that, and felt bad that he’d targeted you because of me. But by stringing you along, and getting you to fall for him, and then betray me, he knew that’s how he’d do the most damage. In fact, I’m surprised he didn’t insist on accompanying you here this afternoon in order to fully appreciate his great victory,” she continued.

  “He wanted to,” I said dully. “I told him not to.”

  I couldn’t process everything that she was saying, couldn’t make sense of her words. Could she possibly be right? It was too horrific to contemplate . . . and yet, Jack had obviously lied to me. And he had encouraged me to tell Maddy about our relationship. And I had thought it was strange that a guy that great, that out of my league, was romancing me so hard.

  “He used you. He used you to hurt me, and I have to give him his credit. It worked. The only consolation I have is that I thought I wanted that shit weasel back, and now I know him for what he is. It’s just too bad you didn’t recognize it sooner. You’re supposed to be the smart one, right? But then, I guess it must have been quite a thrill for you to think that you were stealing a guy from me for a change, rather than the other way around,” Maddy said flatly.

  I looked up at her sharply. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Maddy sighed, and tossed her hair dramatically, her contempt for me oozing out of every pore. If I hadn’t been feeling so shitty and confused, her over-the-top theatrics would have annoyed me. As it was, I was having a hard time drawing a deep breath in.

  “Remember Sawyer? That loser who you cried your eyes out over every night? Oh God, Claire, don’t look at me that way. I didn’t sleep with him, he was hardly my type. But I can’t tell you how many times he hit on me. He used to call me, said that if I went out with him he’d dump you in an instant. Of course, I told him no. I wouldn’t do that to a friend,” she said coldly.

  I shut my eyes. I hadn’t thought Sawyer had the power to cause me any more pain, but there it was, the familiar throb of it lashing out at me again. Sawyer and Jack blended together on the back of my eyelids, two men turning into one, and I knew then that neither of them had truly loved me. I wasn’t sure that any man ever had.

  “I’m tired of talking. I want you to leave,” Maddy said.

  The harsh anger had left her voice, and all that remained was a hollow exhaustion, a sadness at her discovery that the two people she had thought she loved most, outside of her family, had let her down so terribly. There was nothing I could say that would make this better, or convince her that my intention had not been to hurt her, so I just nodded, and stood up, and let myself out of her apartment.

  Chapter 19

  I took a cab back to Jack’s mews house. It was still pouring out, and the rain was sheeting down the windows of the enormous black taxi. Outside, I could see Londoners hurrying along the sidewalk, black umbrellas tipped forward over their heads, somehow managing not to poke one another’s eyes out with the spokes as they passed. I tried to draw in a deep breath to relax, hop
ing that it would keep everything from seeming so nightmarish, and found that my lungs were so tight that I could only gulp in shallow breaths of air. I didn’t know what to think, how to begin figuring out what had just happened. My emotions and thoughts were so jumbled together that picking at just one could be like pulling the thread that unravels an entire sweater.

  First there was Maddy. I felt like a complete and utter shit for the pain I’d caused her. I couldn’t believe that our friendship truly seemed to be over, but how could I blame her for hating me? I hated myself for turning her from the sunny, sparkling woman everyone falls in love with into the caustic, foul-mouthed shrew I’d faced back at her apartment.

  And if Maddy was right about Jack, then he’d lied to me and used me. How had it happened? I thought I’d inoculated myself against this kind of heartache with all of my dating rules and promises that I wouldn’t again be taken in by the illusion of love. And yet somehow I had fallen in love with Jack, and he’d turned out to be an impostor. I’d thought he possessed all of the traits that every fourteen-year-old girl lists when asked about the qualities of her perfect guy—handsome, kind, funny, smart, dependable, attentive, romantic. But it turned out what I’d gotten instead was a vindictive, shallow asshole who had no problem using and deceiving me just to get revenge on his ex-girlfriend.

  The taxi slowed to a stop, and I handed the driver a handful of crumpled bills, not even sure how much I was tipping him, before staggering out onto the sidewalk. I was almost instantly soaked, the unrelenting rain beating down like tiny pebbles against my bare head and cheeks, soaking through my already soggy wool coat. I walked up to Jack’s door, unsure whether I needed to knock or just let myself in. Only a few hours earlier, before I’d learned the truth, I wouldn’t have thought twice about letting myself in with the spare key Jack had lent me. But the act of letting yourself into someone’s house indicated a level of intimacy I no longer had with Jack. As I deliberated what to do, getting further soaked with each passing moment, the door swung open, and there was Jack, looking down at me, his face grave.